Analytical Interviews with Plain Messages

Guidelines for the Interviewed Partner

• Use "Reply" (or "Reply-To-All") to reply to a message
  • Do not alter the subject line of your reply

• Quote the full original message.
  • Do not delete parts of the original quoted message. 
  • Use the standard quotation mark (">")

• Answer inline, whilst keeping the context to the original questions.
  • Do not omit answers
    • instead write: "don't know", "please clarify" or similar
  • Where inline answer is not applicable, answer below the original quoted message.
• Do not summarize answers to different messages
  • Write one seperate reply to each message
     
• Avoid humor, smalltalk and other non-relevant comments in your direct reply.
  • Use a separate reply, with subject "del" or "private", to discuss matters not relevant to the project.

• Avoid overloaded Messages
  • Do not use excessive footers
• Delimit footers, thus they disapear from quotes
• If you use authentication-mechanisms
  • Embed them in the message header or (delimited) footer

Use email clients which can display the messages in threads.

• When the amount of emails increases, it becomes difficult to keep overview.
  • Email clients which can display messages in threads can help.

• Mozilla Thunderbird

• Under "Account Settings > Copies & Folders > When sending messages, automatically:
  • Place a copy in > Other > "Inbox on <your account>"
• This way, incoming and outgoing messages are placed into the Inbox Folder.
  • Click the symbol left beneath "Subject" to activate "Thread View".
• Installation Effort: around 20min.

Move the closed email threads to a seperate email-folder for future reference.